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Wednesday, 27 March 2013

A
17-year-old Swaziland schoolgirl was thrashed with 22 lashes of the cane by a
male teacher because her mother is too poor to pay her school fees.

Save the
Children Fund Director Dumsani Mnisi called the action ‘inhumane’ and ‘a
crime’.

Local media in Swaziland
say the girl from Emtfonjeni High School was one of a group of school students
who had been told to stay away from school until their school fees had been
paid. When they nonetheless turned up for classes they were beaten.

The severity
of the punishment breaks regulations in Swaziland that state students can only
be given a maximum of six lashes with the cane and male teachers should not
beat female students.

Save the Children Fund Director Dumsani Mnisi told
the Swazi Observer newspaper, ‘This is
really inhumane. Beating a child for the fact that he/she hasn’t paid school
fees is a crime on its own.’

Mnisi added,
‘How can you beat someone for something beyond his/her control? This is very
worrying. There are clear guidelines for corporal punishment.’

He said the
teacher who did this should be arrested and relieved of his duties.

The
schoolgirl told the Observer, ‘What
is very painful is that my mother is unable to pay my school fees because she
is unemployed.’

Minister of
Education and Training Wilson Ntshangase told the newspaper he not believe
there was a teacher who could treat a child this way.

‘First of
all no teacher is supposed to punish pupils. The guidelines for corporal
punishment state that only the headteacher is responsible for punishing
pupils,’ he said.

This is not the first time children at Emtfonjeni
High School have been whipped because their parents could not afford to pay
school fees. In July 2011 media in Swaziland reported children were given up to 10 lashes each. The school principal at the
time Themba Shongwe confirmed to the newspaper that the pupils were being
beaten for coming to school without the fees.

‘We have been telling them over and over not to come to
school without the money but they still come. We had no option but to give them
punishment for not obeying the instruction to stay at home,’ the newspaper
reported him saying.

When asked how true it was that the pupils were being
given as many as 10 strokes he said, ‘If a pupil is told to stay at home but
defies the instruction on the first day, you give that pupil a certain number
of strokes. But if the same pupil comes to school again the following day, you
have no choice but to increase the number of strokes.’

These are not the only examples of children being abused
by their schools. In October 2011,
Swaziland was told by the United Nations Human
Rights Periodic Review it must stop
flogging children at school because it violated their human rights. But the fact that the
practice of whippings is so ingrained in Swazi schools was demonstrated by
Sibongile Mazibuko, President of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers
(SNAT), who said at the time he was surprised that inflicting corporal punishment
was against a child’s rights.

Save the Children told the United Nations the treatment of
children in Swaziland schools amounted to ‘torture’.

There are countless examples of extreme and often perverted
use of corporal punishment in schools. At Mpofu High School girls are flogged
by teachers on their bare flesh and if they resist they are chained down so
the beating can continue. They get up to 40 strokes at a time.

At Phonjwane primary school teachers lined
up to whip 20 children. Each child received 27 lashes as nine teachers took
it in turn to give each one three cuts. The children’s crime? They had been
watching two boys fighting.

The Swaziland
Government has been forced into making a public statement for the first time
after news that it sold maize donated as food aid for hungry children in the
kingdom on the open market and deposited the US$3 million takings in a special
bank account.

News of the scandal
has circulated in media across the world over the past two weeks and the
kingdom, ruled by King Mswati III, has been criticised for taking food from the
mouths of the hungry.

In Swaziland one
in three people are officially classified as malnourished and they rely on
donated food from foreign donor agencies to stop from starving. In particular,
the maize was intended to feed people in drought stricken areas of the kingdom.

But, instead of
feeding King Mswati’s hungry subjects, the government decided to sell the maize
on the open market to raise E25 million (US$3 million). This money has been deposited
in a special account at the Central Bank of Swaziland.

The sale of
nearly 12,000 tonnes of maize raised concerns in the international donor
community because donations are expected to be used for their intended purpose.
In the past large donor agencies, such as the European Union, have stopped giving
money as ‘budget support’ to Swaziland: money that the government would be
allowed to spend as it saw fit, because it could not be trusted to spend the
money appropriately.

Instead, donor
agencies will now only fund specific projects where it is clear how the money,
or goods donated, will be used.

In the case of
the Japanese food aid, the maize was clearly intended to be used to feed the
hungry.

Now, Government
Spokesman Percy Simelane has issued a press release claiming that the sale of the
maize was not illegal.

He said the
donors, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), were aware of the
arrangement. This has not been confirmed by Japan.

Simelane stated
that it was not the first time government had sold donated items: a consignment
of fertilizer donated by the Japanese government had also been sold.

He said the
money raised was put aside to assist in developing pro-poor programmes in
agriculture. He did not say how the hungry people of Swaziland had been fed in the
absence of the maize.

Swaziland police shot a man dead in front of his 11-year-old
child as he held his hands up in an attempt to surrender to them.

Thokozani Mngometulu, aged 31, was killed as he got
out of his car at his homestead in Dlakadla, in the Shiselweni region of Swaziland.

Thokozani’s family, who also witnessed the killing,
say he was shot in the pelvis at close range by a police officer.

Thokozani’s sister Buyisile told local media they were at a homestead talking
to some who were waiting for him.

They later discovered the men were police officers.

‘While we were talking, a bottle green car entered
the yard. After parking, Thokozani stepped out of the car. One of the men ran
towards him and pointed a gun at him. Thokozani raised his arms to show that he
wasn’t armed. The officer then shot him twice in the pelvis without saying
anything,’ the Swazi News reported her saying.

The Swazi News reported, ‘As
Thokozani, a father of four lay on the ground, one of the officers rushed to
search him and found a gun tucked in his pants at the back.

‘“One of the men tried to fire a shot using the gun, but nothing
happened. I think there were no bullets. He then tried to place it in his hands
but we asked why he was doing that and the others threatened to assault us.

‘“Fortunately, Thokozani, who I believe was already dead, could not
grasp the gun. They then threw it about a metre or two away from his body,” she
alleged.

‘While all the events unfolded, Buyisile said one of the deceased’s
children (11 years old) and his grandmother watched.’

Police Deputy Public Relations Officer Inspector Khulani Mamba confirmed
the shooting incident and said the police would hold an internal investigation
into what happened.

This was not an isolated incident in Swaziland where police have a
deserved reputation for shooting dead suspects in what appears to be a ‘Shoot-to-Kill’
policy.

In June
2012, a serial rapist suspect Bhekinkhosi Masina, popularly known as Scarface,
was shot by police as they cornered him for arrest. Police say they only shot
him in the thigh and he unexpectedly died of his injuries. The Times of Swaziland newspaper later
revealed he had been shot six times, including in the head and back.

Since then it has been revealed that in a separate incident, a mentally ill
man, Mduduzi Mngometulu, aged 34, was shot seven times by police and died of
his injuries. He had four holes in his stomach, one in the leg and two bullet
wounds on the left side of his chest.

These are not isolated incidents in Swaziland where police have a growing
record of killing or maiming suspects before arrest. The cases have largely
gone unreported outside of the kingdom itself.

In one example, police executed a suspect, Thabani Mafutha Dlamini, at Nkwalini
in Hlatikulu in the presence of his colleagues and home boys in what local
media called “cowboy style”. The Swazi
Observer newspaper reported the incident in December 2011 saying: “Police
had previously warned the mother of the dead man to ‘budget for funeral
expenses’ as they intended to remove him. He was said to be on a police ‘wanted
list’”. Dlamini was unarmed.

In a separate case in February 2011, a Swazi policeman shot Mbongeni Masuku,
described in media as a Form IV pupil, in the head in what was later described
as “an execution-style killing”.

The killing happened outside a bar in Matsapha, an industrial town in
Swaziland.

Masuku’s uncle Sigayoyo Maphanga said Mbongeni had been dragged out of his car
by police. He told the Swazi Observer, a policeman whom he named, “shot my
nephew at the back of the left ear and he fell on the ground with blood oozing
from his mouth and ears. We were all shocked and angered by such brutality from
police officers.”

In a separate case in May 2011, Mathende Matfonsi was shot dead by police while
he was attending a field of dagga, inside the remote forests of Lomahasha near
the border with Mozambique.

His family accused the police of “cold-blooded murder”. Matfonsi was shot dead
at Ebhandeni, the same area where Nkosinathi Khathwane had previously been shot
dead by soldiers at night.

The police told residents that Matfonsi fired at them and they shot back. The
family said he was unarmed.

In March 2010, police shot a man as he was trying to surrender to them. This
time the victim, Mncedisi Mamba, did not die. His mother, Thoko Gamedze, said
Mamba had his hands up and was surrendering to police, but they shot him
anyway.

It is not only crime suspects who get shot. Legitimate protestors are also
targets. In February 2012, a woman at a protest march in Siteki, called by
vendors and transport operators over plans by the town hall to move the local
bus rank, was shot in the hand as she walked away from police. Reports said she
was only 2m away from police when they fired.

Police in Swaziland also shoot innocent bystanders. In May 2012, a student was
shot in the leg by police as they tried to break up a protest at the Limkokwing
private university in Mbabane. The 23-year-old was not part of the protest and
was caught in crossfire, according to human rights activists in the kingdom.